Retrieval As A Memory Modifier: An Interpretation of Negative Recency and Related Phenomena
Robert A. Bjork
Abstract
Although it is commonplace to assume that the type or level of processing during the input of a verbal item determines the representation of that item in memory, which in turn influences later attempts to store, recognize, or recall that item or similar items, it is much less common to assume that the way in which an item is retrieved from memory is also a potent determiner of that item’s subsequent representation in memory. Retrieval from memory is often assumed, implicitly or explicitly, as a process analogous to the way in which the contents of a memory location in a computer are read out, that is, as a process that does not, by itself, modify the state of the retrieved item in memory. In my opinion, however, there is ample evidence for a kind of Heisenberg principle with respect to retrieval processes: an item can seldom, if ever, be retrieved from memory without modifying the representation of that item in memory in significant ways.